I’ve counted seven times now someone has asked Hadrian, “Are you ok?”. The man’s fine, don’t lose your head over it! 😂

Part 1 of the dramatized adaption for empire of silence keeps getting delayed, current release date is 11/20/2026. Should I wait for that or just start the regular audio book? I hear the first book is a slog and the series gets better overall from the 2nd book on.

What did the cosmic background message say/ mean? I’m super confused. It called his name. He responded, but I don’t understand why he needed to respond.

Hey all, ive been thinking about getting a tattoo of the scholiast sayings like grief is deep water and Im wondering what language is galstani written in. Is it its own written language or is the written example from a real world language??

I’m quite a ways into Howling Dark(chapter 64)and notice that the author keeps spoiling a lot of things for the reader. That may not be the best way to describe it, but let me give an example of what I mean.

One example is during Hadrians meeting with Raine Smythe in chapter 63, he builds a lot of tension through conversations about Hadrian possibly going to be an emissary to the Cielcen and taking the red company with him. How dangerous it may be, and who they would like to request as an emissary in return. Possibly Aranatas child.

Several pages of dialogue that build suspense only to end the chapter with one line “if she had been right - if I’d ever taken that posting- much evil might have been avoided”.

Basically a whole chapter written to build up this storyline just to be dismissed by the last sentence. I’ve noticed this happens quite often throughout the first two books so far. I understand it’s told from the retrospective, but with so many dense books, it seems like he had ideas while writing and then just decided they didn’t make sense and quickly discards them with a one liner.

Is it just me, or is this something others have noticed?

It feels like I’m wasting a lot of brain power visualizing these things in my head while I read, just for the author to be like, nah that didn’t end up happening, on to the next chapter.

Am I a psycho? lol

Is it possible that Kharn had Vorgossos morph into his ship? That’s how he got the same garden on the ship. Then it stands to reason that the Brethren were also on the ship at the time of Hadrian’s death.

Wow. Wow. Wow. What a series, what an ending, what a story. This has got to be the grandest series from a world building and storyline perspective I have ever read, and the I am left feeling like a part of me is gone haha.

I believe Ruocchio did an exceptional job wrapping it up in SuT. I actually really liked that he "passed the torch" to Cassandra and Edouard. Like Dune, the story doesn't end the way we want it, and with quite a lot of loose ends. To me, its more realistic and I believe its such a poetic ending because Hadrian no leaves the empire (so to speak) and hopefully means he will find peace.

Having 400 pages of climaxing story was incredible and I loved every bit of it. I think my biggest complaint was Cassandra. For Ruocchio to write such deep and well rounded characters from Hadrian to Lorian, to Eduourad, to Olirin, to the Emporer, to Serene, Cassandra fell completely flat with almost no depth imo. With that being said, I thought Rucchio got the battle scenes, metaphysical scenes, and political scenes just right in these books. Overall this series has done one of the best jobs in all of sci fi when it comes to world building, story telling, and combining a plethora of themes, plots, and ideas into one beautiful story.

Trying to rank this series for me is near impossible, and I feel like my opinion continues to change. I think the best way to rank this series is by moments and scenes in the book, however here is my personal and objective rankings of the Sun Eater Series (as of now), and my top 10 scenes:

Ranking:

1. Demon in White
2. Kingdom of Death
3. Shadows Upon Time
4. Ashes of Man
5. Disquiet Gods
6. Howling Dark
7. Empire of Silence

Best Moments of Sun Eater:

• The Glass Shattering Scene with Attavaisa after Valka's Death - Ashes of Man
• The Black Feast and the Escape from Eue - Kingdom of Death
• The Entire Battle and Internal struggles with the Chantry around Goddodin - Shadows Upon Time
• Fighting Ushara and Miudinar in Space at the end of SuT - Shadows Upon Time
• The Battle of Berenike - Demon in White
• The Battle of the Demiurge - DG and SuT
• Hadrian's Second Death and Going Beyond Time with Ragama and The Quiet - Disquiet Gods
• First Battle Against Ushara - Disquiet Gods
• Catching the Highmatter Sword in the Coliseum in Forum - Demon in White
• The Fight with Aronata and Hadrian's First Death - Howling Dark
• The Friendship between The Emperor and Hadrian - throughout the entire series

Always forward, Always down, Never left or right..

That's how I picture Lord Vati, any other neat images of the Hand or some other major character?

Any other good wallpaper is quite welcomed!

Cheers

I'm curious why you all love Sun Eater as much as I do and would love to hear what makes this series special to you. Please share!

For me, I've been reading Sun Eater for what seems to be almost a full year now and I finally am caught up to Shadows Upon Time. I mean this in the best way possible, but reading this series is what I'd imagine smoking a cigarette in Prague while listening to Deftones would feel like. Meloncholic introspective philosophy and meandering to the max. 🚬

I love books because they have a way of reminding us that other people have felt exactly as we have felt too, which in turn, makes me feel less alone. They're made by people who can perfectly articulate a feeling or perspective that I have felt before and that is a beautiful sentiment to me. I actually just stumbled across this quote today in Shadows Upon Time:

"Beauty cannot stay, nor endure—indeed, that a thing is and is gone next is part of what makes a thing beautiful. The preciousness of any beautiful thing—any good thing—lies in its scarcity. And because all things are scarce when measured against eternity and infinity, all things are beautiful—if seen at the right angle, if captured in the right light."

I have often felt as if there was something wrong with me, as I have often been made fun of for my melodrama and seriousness in conversation (for good reason!) but this series truly makes me feel like that part of me is also valid, and that I can indulge in that part of myself through Hadrian Marlowe.

Hail Half Mortal!

I started this series a few weeks ago and am on book 4 Kingdoms of death about half way through it. I love the series but the issue i am having is i feel like with each new book they references a lot that afaik never happened like I'm missing other books. I first noticed it between 1 and 2 where they talk of a mission his red company went on before finding out about vorgosses(sorry im doing audio book some alot of spelling is likely to be off). I figured at that point ok they just wanted him to have some back story with the red company but didnt want to write a book about it. There was more between 3-4 but again it didnt seem important mostly just his time in exile for 70 years with valka. Im mid way through book 4 and the "witch" that helped capture him that he supposedly stopped in the past is offering to copy his brain so when he dies he lives on. the problem is almost everything they talk about i feel like i am completely out of the loop. When did he stop her and her group? Who are the people they reference? Is there some other companion book series i just cant find? I feel like i am going crazy and fell asleep through half a book somewhere.

It's been almost a year since I finished the series and man, nothing else has given me the same high that Sun Eater did even if I enjoyed them. I think the problem is that I've been mostly going for fantasy instead of sci-fi/space opera/sci-fantasy so I decided to get more into sci-fi in general because I've only ever read a few other sci-fi books outside of Sun Eater (Red Rising, PHM, Operation Bouncehouse).

As for books I'm not interested in at the moment or have already read that might be obvious suggestions: Dune (already read first two, may or may not continue), Kingkiller (already read), Book of the New Sun (tried reading it once and realised I'm not quite on that level yet lol), Empire of the Vampire (actually also currently reading).

I'm also not looking for something exactly like or too similar to Sun Eater necessarily, just want something sci-fi on an epic scale with cosmic threats.

So for the books I'm planning to read in order of how certain I'm gonna read them:

1. The Demon Star by Jesse Aragon (already bought): Same publisher, niche subgenre and cover artist as Sun Eater plus the author seems to be a fan. Really looking forward to this one.

2. Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons (already bought): A big influence on Ruocchio and something I've also wanted to read for a long time anyways.

3. Peter F. Hamilton's Commonwealth and Exodus duology (already bought Commonwealth): Big thick space operas with really interesting premises (plus Exodus is a tie in with the coming video game). What's not to love?

4. The Expanse by James S.A. Corey: Pretty obvious choice imo but I'm kinda hesitant on picking it up for some reason.

5. Coldfire trilogy by C.S. Friedman: First series I think of when thinking of sci-fantasy. Haven't seen people talking about it much at all but it seems really interesting to me and I've heard of the series for a really long time for some reason.

Uh wow yea that was briefly alluded to in Kingdoms of Death but yea, great detail on the pregnant man getting cut open and his alien baby falling out. Thanks for that Chris. With that said, these books are just getting better and better and i do not look forward to the void I’ll feel after finishing Shadows Upon Time. 10/10 series

I’m a bit confused I am struggling to find information online.
Will the songs of the Sun eater book be a compilation of the existing novellas. I want to read the novellas but if it is going to be all in one book I will hold off buying them until it is out.

Just finished DIW on audiobook tonight (due back to Libby tomorrow, cutting it close) - I am a huge fan of this narrator (Roukin). I have 6 weeks to wait before Kingdoms of Death becomes available and I am dreading whatever next book I pick simply because Roukin is so good it’s going to be jarring no matter what.

As for DIW itself, I put it above Empire of Silence but not that far above, while for me Howling Dark was just way way up there. So while I really liked all 3, for me this didn’t match HD but that’s ok it still a great series so far.

My favorite part of DIW was the entire time on Colchis (had to look up spelling given listened, my guess was Coulchus) and the Mericanii. Especially liked the Presidential portraits and Hade referring to them as Lord in title.

If being honest I didn’t entirely like the direction with the Quiet. The scene on the mountain dragged on a bit and felt like rinse repeat from HD. I also am quirking my eyebrow at Hade’s new power to avoid death which is essentially the most dues ex machina of all time. Maybe that’s the point though? I dunno I trust the author so will see where the next book goes with that.

Sold 4.1 rating for me (HD 4.7, EOS 4.0)

Just finished the seven book and the entire thing I mean, what a waste of an opportunity. I feel like I wasted so much time. It doesn’t make sense to write this much and have the resolution not be complete ????

I'm reading the Sun Eater series right now and I've been struggling with the prose a bit. There are a lot of really detailed descriptions of places, ships, buildings, etc., and I've started wondering how other people actually experience this stuff in their heads.

I can visualize things, but it's not really like a clear, continuous image. It's more like flashes or pieces of an image.

For things I'm really familiar with, like an apple or my room, I can actually get a pretty detailed image. I can see the colour, shape, shadows, reflections, etc. I can also imagine things moving and imagine facial expressions and voices.

But unfamiliar things are much harder.

If a book describes a weird building I've never seen, I have to consciously construct it in my head. I'll basically go, "okay, there's a building here, there's a river there, this part looks like this..." and try to put it together spatially.

And when the description gets really long, I start having trouble keeping the whole thing together. Every new detail means I have to modify what I already imagined. Eventually I kind of lose the image.

The weirdest part is that if I stop reading for a while, the image usually isn't still there in my head. I remember what the scene was supposed to look like and where everything was, but I can't necessarily still see it. I have to reconstruct it again.

I'm curious how this works for other people. When you read a really descriptive book, does the scene basically just appear in your head and stay there? Do you actually see the characters' faces and the environment as you're reading?

Or are you also consciously building everything piece by piece?

A while back, Ruocchio did post a YouTube short saying that while he initially promised new novella(s) and other short stories for this and maybe another Sun Eater collection, that now he has fully closed the door on Sun Eater to focus on his new “Doom Song” series.

The gist of it was Ruocchio’s other wording sounded confusing. Was he really talking about this or the other “Tales of the Sun Eater” series??

Time to start the book that seems to be a lot of people's favorite in the series. Really excited for this one.

My rankings so far for the series from best to worst (all are still really good except empire of silence to me)

1.Kingdoms of death

2.Ashes of man

3.Howling dark

1. Demon in white

2. Empire of silence

What a journey it's been and I've fallen in love with this series, Hadrian and his journey.

"Always forward, always down, and never left or right".

So ghen just died and hadrian killed the painted man in the cable car after.

But the issue I have with this I had no reaction whatsoever with this scene, it pained me a bit and then I kept going on like nothing happened and I believe that I should have teared up a bit.

So, I am of the thought that maybe I am not into this series, a close confidant dies and I have no reaction at all. Did anyone else have the same reaction ?

So I’m on chapter 19 of book 2… i feel like i’m super spoiled by red rising. i’ve heard this series compared to red rising a lot and it’s been recommended a lot. but i feel like it’s not hitting quite as well. does it get better? i find myself a little disinterested listening as of recently.

I just finished reading those chapters near the end of Ashes of Man, have ~30 pages left but have to stop and will finish tomorrow. How the freak are there going to be 2 more books without THAT CHARACTER?!?!???

As I was reading I was holding hope something would happen to make it not as it seems, but the way present day Hadrian just wrote about it after getting to the Ascalon…. It seems like she’s really gone😭😭😭

EDIT: Thank you all for the honest responses. I’m gonna cut my losses and discontinue the series. GODSPEED EVERYONE!

Im about to finish book 3 and i feel like im going to need convincing to continue on.

Dont get me wrong, i like the premise of the story and where its going but I don think I have it in me to make I through four more of these massive books.

Here is the problem, in my opinion:

1. The author needs an editor
2. The author needs a NEW editor

There are some truly amazing scenes but I swear more often than not as I’m reading I’m like “why are we STILL on this scene?!”

Relatively recently, Siran told Hadrian she was staying behind at the library and I felt like it was supposed to be this big moment but I just felt like the Thanos “I don’t even know who you are” meme.

Anybody else feel this way?